This post is part of the weekly Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMckinnon.com. Make sure you check out the other setlists too!

The church is still on a high from the conferences and guest speakers from the past few weeks, but more than just being on a high, we’re excited about what doors God is opening for us, and closing others too.   It’s been great having a quiet-ish week since then to soak all of it in, and prepare for moving forward – wherever that may be.

Today’s AM message was drawn on 2 Cor 8:7 (shown in the Amplified translation below) :

Now as you abound and excel and are at the front in everything – in faith, in expressing yourselves, in knowledge, in all zeal, and in your love for us – [see to it that you come to the front now and] abound and excel in this gracious work [of almsgiving] also.

and looked at what those things we are told we excel at mean…

The PM message expanded on some of the themes from the morning, partly focusing on the Hebrew word for prosperity “shalowm“. The more I think about how to describe the message, the less able I feel to do so in a short space…so I won’t. There was lots there. Like there always is.

Music

Sunday AM
1. I’m Not Ashamed (Andrew, Thomas / Hillsong)
2. Can I Have More Of You? (Byrnes)
3. Lead Me To The Cross (Fraser / Hillsong)
4. Where You Go, I’ll Go (Johnson, Mohr / Bethel)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. No One Like You (David Crowder*Band)
…and for the ministry/end of service
6. Where You Go, I’ll Go (Johnson, Mohr / Bethel)

Rachel led for the first time this morning. She’s 17 and has been in the main team since she was 14. She’s been a song leader, as opposed to a worship leader, for just on 2 years and tt was great to see her rise up a level into leadership from being a singer and No.2 keyboardist. She’d been deep in prayer about it all week, and though a little nervous, she has such a well-developed dependence on God that she did a beautiful job leading the worship today. It’s only the beginning

Sunday PM
1. For Your Glory (Pringle / C3)
2. Saving Son (Murgida / Harbourside)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Shout You Praise (Orosa, Araullo, Reddy / Harbourside)

…and then for Worship+ after the service
4. For Your Glory (Pringle / C3)
5. More Than Life (Morgan / Hillsong)
6. With Everything (Houston / Hillsong)
7. Let It Rain (Farren)

Julie led tonight. She’s 15. Rachel, who led this morning, is her elder sister. I’ve said it before, but I love seeing our youth rise up as leaders. Our pastor said he remembered her as a toddler. She took it all in stride (she’s not one for attention), and did a beautiful job leading us into the throneroom.

Worship+ was quite probably the best it’s ever been as a worship encounter. Invigorating.

Taking a cue from Steff, a Sunday Setlists blogger who often includes videos of the songs in her sets, I thought I’d include this one, the title track from C3’s 2008 album. We’ve been doing this for several months now, and it’s a great upbeat song – lots of dancing happening. C3 may not be as famous as Hillsong or Planetshakers, but many would be aware of Phil Pringle’s Christian City Church international network. Semi-interesting aside : Phil Pringle and Brian Houston grew up together in New Zealand, so I’m told by a very reliable source.  Amazing to think that two of the main church leaders from the southern hemisphere were childhood friends…

Other Stuff:
No-One Like You was new for us. It went really well…except that the words for the projection were typed up in an el bizarro manner apparently, so were very hard to follow. Diane will #prorably get around to fixing those soon…

Finally, my twitter followers may know that the front fill speakers I mentioned last week were indeed a problem…they’d been blown. Unfun. No-one’s sure how it happened; no-one ever is. Thankfully, working where I do, I was able to wangle some of our hire stock and get the issue fixed until ours are repaired.

How about your weekend ?

Um, actually, there’s nothing in here at all about hills.

Except to point out, if you didn’t know, that Hillsong is so named because it’s in the Hills District of Sydney.  It used to be called Hills Christian Life Centre.  The Hills district is also a little bit hilly.

Anyway, back on track…

A number of weeks ago I mentioned in a post that at some point I may talk about why we do so much Hillsong music at Harbourside.  I have also alluded to some of the reasons in the past as well, but today I’m going to lay them out for you…just to clear up any possible confusion…

5 Reasons why Harbourside Christian Life Centre use of a LOT of Hillsong music.

1. First and foremost, our Pastor loves them.  So do our people, though I’m generalising of course.  I love them too, though I can be even more specific and say that in general (?!), I love Reuben Morgan’s and Brooke Fraser’s songs the most.

2. We are part of the Australian Christian Churches, which is the ‘new’ name for the Assemblies of God in Australia.  Hillsong is the largest church in our denomination, and produces the most music (though Planetshakers aren’t far behind).

3. While we are not Hillsong, or part of the Hillsong Network, we are (or have been*) open in ‘marketing’ our church as ‘like Hillsong’ when talking to people about what they can expect.  It therefore makes sense to include music by the only worship team to regularly have Top 5 albums in this country.  Come to think of it, unlike the US, they are just about the only Christian artist to have Top 100 albums period.  Excluding bands such as The Fray, of course.

4. Despite a lot of things I read about their music being difficult for congregations, our congregation love the weird timings and the lack of predictability (though being unpredictable can become predictable).  For instance, I am a fan of Chris Tomlin, but often I find his stuff quite safe (read: commercial).  There’s nothing wrong with that.  I am Mr Commercial Pop.  But I’m also a little bit twisted and have very diverse tastes.  I prefer what a lot of other people do – like Jesus Culture, but even more than that, I prefer Kim Walker. Period.**

5. Finally, and probably most importantly, we are encouraged to bring our own music.  Music borne from the encounters we have with Christ on a daily basis.  That’s why we’re recording a worship album this year.  I’m producing it.  Our first studio session is this Saturday.  Yay!

Who is your favourite worship artist?  Do you find it resonates with others too?

* The reason I qualified that statement : we are moving away from where we have been, and becoming less programmed.  Hillsong may well be doing this too – the reasons given for some changes to the July conference are to allow more freedom for the Holy Spirit to move.  This excites me, so I’m even more keen than usual to be there.

** You may not be aware that the expression “period” doesn’t get used in Australia.  We call that dot at the end of sentences a full stop.  It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Continuing from my post after the first session of Bill’s conference, and some tweets about it being the most amazing 24 hours of my life, here’s my attempt to put into words what this weekend meant to me :

* I’ve often come back from conferences ‘hyped’ and ready to do stuff.  Once the hype wears off, so does the desire to do stuff.  There was no hype here.  In fact, almost the opposite.  DaySpring Church are probably one of the most old-school-yet-modern pentecostal churches in Sydney and flowing in extended free-worship, prophecy, healing, etc is normal for them, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons why Bill has taken on apostolic leadership for the church.  Both Diane and I have come away from the weekend feeling a shift in our mindsets, a shift in our spirits, and completely unhyped.  Just ready to move deeper into the mysteries of our wonderful God.  Everyone else who has been there this weekend is feeling the same.

* If you’re not familiar, do some research on Bill and Beni Johnson (his wife) and their home church Bethel in Redding, CA.  Their ministry has seen people raised from the dead, creative healings, countless other miracles, and all without any of the flashiness that can sometimes be part of these ministries. They are real people.  They both had people in the conference congregation praying for them, laying on hands, etc.

* David Crabtree, the pastor of DaySpring, gave a snippet of his awesome teaching series on grace.  In short, grace doesn’t just mean “unmerited favour” like so many of us think.  Try some word substitution with some key verses and you’ll soon see that “empowered presence” is really what God is getting at.

* By far the majority of the sessions were designed to help us walk in authority when we pray, especially for healing or recreative needs.  We weren’t just receiving, we were doing.  Practical workshops in any other context always leave me feeling “ugh”, but this was so beautiful, natural and real that I soon realised this is how I need to live my whole life.  One thing Bill said that really resonated with me was about why some are healed and some aren’t, etc, etc.  This is not a direct quote, not even close, but I’m going to put it on here as a quote…for effect, ya know.

Jesus came to earth, fully God and fuly human, yet stripped himself of His divinity in order to live as humans except that He was completely without sin.  He was therefore totally reliant on the power of the Holy Spirit to “do” all the things He did (and remember, if all of that was written down, there would not be enough room in the entire planet to house it).  When Jesus died for us, we too became blameless, sinless.  He then sent the Holy Spirit to live in and with us.  So from the day of pentecost onwards, we have had exactly the same “tools” at our disposal as Jesus did.  The only thing which prevents us from being as effective in our lives as Jesus was is our self-imposed separation from the fullness of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, our free-will.  We have all we need, we just don’t use it, or even realise it.  The reason some are healed and some aren’t is that I’m not aware of everything that is going on, I’m not in that place of total submission to the Holy Spirit.

And that was from just one minute of the hours of gold this ministry team brought.  The way he explained this made so much sense.  If I haven’t made sense, and you wanna know more, leave a comment and I’ll try to elaborate or simplify.

That’s all I can process for now.  I do plan on doing another post with some more of the thoughts from our notes (actually, Diane is likely gathering some thoughts for that post – a guest post from my wife!), but we eventually stopped taking notes as we’ve ordered the CDs.  There is just too much to take in all at once.  I take comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who thinks this way too, others who’ve heard Bill speak before didn’t even start taking notes and just ordered the CDs before the conference even began…they were ahead of the game.

So I posted earlier about how excited Diane & I were about being able to attend Bill Johnson’s conference, When Heaven Invades Earth.

So far, we are not even the slightly disappointed.  I was tweeting some of the gems he shared (and being selective is hard…), and hashtagged them with #billjohnson if anyone is wanting to search.

I already knew he was a funny man as well as being incredibly humble about God’s destiny for him and the people he shepherds.  My favourite of his funny gems tonight was…

I have found Aussies are fairly quiet until they drink

Very astute Bill

The band from Dayspring Church, where the conference is being held, led us in some Jesus Culture songs (Can I Have More If You?, King Of Glory) before going into some solid worship with their own music, finishing with Hillsong’s The Stand.  The hour of worship flew by, as did the next close-to-three hours of teaching and healing.  74 healings.  Amazing.

Can’t wait for tomorrow!

I know, I’m a sop – my wife would wholeheartedly agree. Just see my last post for evidence.

What a great way to start a post titled ‘Manhood’ !

I’ve thought about doing a post on something more masculine, but truth be told, I’m not stereotypically masculine.

And I say that in full confidence of my masculinity, because it’s much more about characteristics we find in the Bible than what the world would have us believe. Like duh…

For example, I want to be a Psalm 1 Man. Nowhere in there do I see a requirement for me to get excited about power tools/cars/sports/fishing/wrestling/guns, etc. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying that for me it would be totally unnatural. And the last thing I want to be is someone I’m not – I’ve tried that, it’s neither big nor clever.

So if I write about leadership, worship, wisdom – it’s me being me, and not trying to be someone I’m not. In Christ, I have the strength to stop fighting that battle and did so a while back.

All of which means when I get a high score in this (thanks to Fred for getting me there), I’m in no way ashamed – that’s who I am, no pressure. Srsly. It’s all part of a pressure-free life and ministry, as Jesus Culture say.